Being able to easily read and edit them matters too (pipes are just files so one might choose that file to be a persistent file on disk). Having a none-text fo

Being able to easily read and edit them matters too (pipes are just files so one might choose that file to be a persistent file on disk). Having a none-text format would mean all your file editing tools would have to then understand this new binary format. So you’d have to rewrite every tool to manipulate that data as if it’s text. By which point you’ve effectively just reinvented ASCII.